Home Secretary David Blunkett was heckled by angry residents today as he toured a troubled housing estate to launch a package of anti-crime measures.

A crowd of locals jeered and swore at the politician as arrived at the Easton Christian Family Centre in Bristol to announce that a special team will attempt to crack down on crime and anti-social behaviour in the area.

About 15 people screamed "this is just a PR stunt" as they followed Mr Blunkett on a 10-minute walkabout. He was escorted by about a dozen police officers and led by his guide dog, Lucy.

Demonstrator Miriam Henry, who lives in the city's Easton district where drug dealing, prostitution and violent crime are rife, said: "We are living in a nightmare day in, day out.

"If the Government is so committed to doing something, then why is it getting worse?

"It's just the same old empty promises. All these people will disappear tomorrow and things will be back to how they always were."

Protester Simon Mitchell said: "The police have known about the crime situation and the drug dealing for years and they have chosen to do nothing about it. They are containing the problem rather than dealing with it.

"He (David Blunkett) thinks he can use our community as a political football. He should be addressing the community, not dressing up some stage managed PR stunt."

The words "Easton doesn't need another Home Office stunt" had been daubed in red paint on a nearby advertising hoarding and several people hurled abuse as Mr Blunkett toured the area.

Bristol's Stapleton Road area is one of five communities with high crime levels which are to become the first Policing Priority Areas.

In the first initiative led by the Home Office's Police Standards Unit, plans will be drawn up to tackle persistent crime patterns which officers have so far been unable to crack.

PSU staff have already begun working with the local forces to identify problems in each area and are expected to draw up their action plans within a month.

The four other zones announced today are Camberwell Green in south London; Stoke-on-Trent's Grange Estate; Little Horton and Canterbury in Bradford; and the West Ward in Rhyl, north Wales.

Creation of the zones is the first time the Home Office - in the shape of the new unit led by former private sector executive and ex-policeman Kevin Bond, on a salary higher than Prime Minister Tony Blair's - has intervened so directly in local policing.

At the end of today's visit the demonstrators - who are frustrated by the perceived lack of police presence on the estate - shouted "see you next year" to departing police officers.

The Home Secretary today also launched new guidelines which are designed to help restore confidence in the way police deal with ethnic minorities but will increase red tape for officers.

It will mean everyone stopped by police will get a certificate telling them why they were stopped - rather than getting one only when a search is also carried out.

Mr Blunkett said the aim of the new guidance was to reassure the police that they had Government backing for stop and search and also to reassure the public that they were being conducted in a proper and targeted way.

He said the vast majority of violent crime was "black on black" while a large proportion of serious crime was committed by young black males.

"We need to be honest about it and we need to do something about it," he said.

"It should give people reassurance that the police know what they are doing -that the stop and search was for a purpose."

The guidelines are based on the most controversial recommendation of the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, which ruled that the Metropolitan Police force was "institutionally racist".

Last year police in England and Wales stopped and searched 853,188 people, according to Home Office figures, and some officers believe there are 10 times as many people stopped - meaning 8.5 million new bits of paperwork.

Black people are still seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites, according to new Home Office figures out today. Even though the number of searches fell last year, the number of blacks targeted rose 4%.

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of crime reduction charity Nacro, welcomed the proposals, commenting: "Requiring police officers to give reasons justifying every stop will be a valuable discipline, reducing the risk that these powers will be abused."

Marian Fitzgerald of the London School of Economics, who studied the use of stop and search powers for the Home Office and Scotland Yard, said the code would be counter-productive.

"It's going to unnecessarily inflame those encounters and make them more confrontational, which is something we certainly don't need. It makes no sense whatsoever," she told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: "The bureaucracy is just mind-blowing. The Home Secretary says he wants to remove unnecessary levels of bureaucracy - but here's yet more."

Ex-offenders' charity Unlock said the bid to extend stop and search was "seriously misguided".

Chief executive Mark Leech said: "The solution to crime lies in the direction of addressing more the underlying causes of crime and in getting more police out on the streets where increasing the certainty of detection is the only real route to reducing crime."